Back in 1992, after having spent several years writing exclusively short fiction,
I buckled down and wrote my first novel,
Balak. My agent at the time very quickly found a mass-market publisher who was interested
in the book, and for a while, it looked like its publication was in the bag. Unfortunately,
before I even signed the contract — as so frequently happens in the publishing
business — the imprint that would have launched Balak went the ways of the wind, leaving the novel without a home. Sometime
afterward, though,
Wildside Press, a much smaller but prolific and respected publishing house, picked up the
novel, and released it in 2000 (for reasons unknown,
Amazon.com
shows Balak's publication date as 2003, but that is incorrect), along with my short fiction collection,
The Last Trumpet.
Recently, I've had a mind to do something more with the book because
the character, Balak (whom I appropriated from the Bible), has played a significant
role in a number of my works of fiction — including a very new one. Since Wildside Press has had the rights to the book for... OMG, twenty-six years (and has done very well with it, I'm pleased to say)... I decided to reclaim the paperback and ebook rights (Crossroad Press has the audiobook rights, and it is currently available), revise it so that it reads less like the inaugural outing of a very green novelist, and repackage it. The first step is complete, and I have also secured the rights an apt piece of art by the incomparable M. Wayne Miller, whose work adorns several of my book covers as well as numerous stories I published in Deathrealm magazine back in the day. Note that the cover image above is a dummy I created with Wayne's art; it is subject to change.
The long and short of it is that I am currently in the revision process, and once it's all done, Crossroad Press will release the new paperback and ebook editions (the audiobook will remain the original). I anticipate having this all in the bag in the next couple of months, so it will hopefully to precede the release of Broken Barriers, which is also in the pipe.
So, I hope this will be cause for celebration and that you unfortunate souls who were exposed to the original product will avail yourself of the new edition rather than go the rest of your lives wondering what the hell was wrong with that peculiar young writer.*
*Now, you may rightly wonder what the hell is wrong with that peculiar old writer.
